The Plague Bringer
by safa'at keruth
Summary: AU, oneshot. People say that goldfish can only remember for three seconds. Anzu wishes that were true. #contest spirit, round one#


For **Round 1** of **The Yu-Gi-Oh Fanfiction Contest**. The pairing is **Spiritshipping (Yami no Yugi x Yugi x Anzu)**. WARNINGS: Anzu!harem, threesomes, incest, yaoi, het, and implied sex; slight Tender, Bronze, Otogi x People, and Pegasus x Everyone. Don't like, don't read.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh.

Keep in mind, please, that everyone in here is a _goldfish_. Enjoy!

* * *

The Plague Bringer

* * *

_**A Very Brief History Lesson**_

**The Plague hit many times before it met its end. It was like a curse, like a dead immortal demon come to haunt the corners of the Tank, like a wash of cold water in tropical seas. Always, always, when a new group of fish was thriving and happy and content, the Plague came. It crept from body to body, from current to current and ebb to ebb, until the entire Tank reeked of death and decomposition and the tangible grief of those unlucky few who were left behind.**

**There were no survivors. Those who were hit died, no matter what remedies were given, no matter the pleading of their friends. So when the first fish slunk listlessly among the bottom of the Tank and grew weak and refused to eat, the entire group would erupt into dismay, because their fate was sealed.**

**And only rarely**—**so, so rarely**—**was there one who lived through the Plague, one who faced the new group that ventured into the Tank and knew that they, too, would leave.**

* * *

"Bakura," Ryou sobbed. Anzu mused suddenly, inappropriately, that it seemed his twin's name was the only word the silver-white fish could force out, so frail-looking were his scales and fins.

"Mmm," Bakura answered absently, fighting the deadly lethargy that always came with the Plague, his body emaciated almost beyond recognition. A slight flicker of life returned when his eyes landed on Anzu, silent and mournful by his side, and his mouth opened to ask the first question that came to mind: "Did Anzu like it when Yami and Yugi screwed her brains out, Ryou?"

"Bakura!" Ryou gasped in reprimand, a hot red flush crawling up his neck, and he looked for a moment like the Ryou that Anzu used to know—innocent, shy, running after his twin and attempting fix the mayhem Bakura so enjoyed to cause. "Anzu's _right here_, you can't just—"

"Is that a no?" Bakura murmured, and although his voice was almost inaudible, Ryou immediately stopped talking, waiting to hear the other's words. "Then we still… have a chance… hmm, Ry?" His breathing was labored, the last of his air leaving his gills along with his twin's nickname, eyes staring into the distance.

"Please," Ryou whispered. "Please live, please Bakura, you have to try. I-I don't know what I'd do without you, you have to stay with me…"

"I'll… think about it," Bakura allowed. "The Plague—it won't get me that easy, Ryou…" He paused for a long moment before continuing. "Did-did you like it… when _I_ screwed your brains out, brother?" And with that line that was so like Bakura that tears streaked Ryou's cheeks once more, his eyes went terribly, terribly blank as his body drifted slowly up from the ground, following the push and pull of the current that led to the Black Funnel, where all the leftover food and waste was sucked in, never to be seen again.

It pained Anzu to think that Bakura—arrogant, mocking Bakura—was now counted among the pile of junk that included unwanted food pellets and spit-out flakes.

But it was worse for Ryou, who seemed to fade until he was even paler than before… and just give up.

The casualties climbed up one notch.

* * *

_Yami glides among them like the king they know he is__—even Bakura, who hates him, moves out of the way and lets him pass; even Marikku, who trusts nobody but his brother, seeks no fight with the one who could be of royal blood and scale; even Malik, Marikku's proud, impatient sibling, is drawn into Yami's net._

_Yugi is there too, entranced from Anzu's side where he always has been to swim doggedly after the most attractive of the new arrivals, adoration in his eyes and praise on his lips. And Anzu watches her new brood with the haughtiness of the One And Only Female Present, and nobody can guess from glancing at her emotionless expression that she is a Survivor, that she has lived through three Plagues with Yugi fighting death along with her, that she resents Yami for stealing away the one who has been her companion for so long._

_Yugi has always been there for her and __**only**__ her, ever since she befriended him many months ago, and now a newcomer who has been in the Tank for less than a week has stolen him away, stolen all her followers away in favor of worshipping his sleek red-finned body._

_Oh, Anzu cannot deny that he is handsome, far more so than any of the others in the Tank, and she is almost ashamed to admit that when Yami speaks to her in his low, rich voice or looks at her with those darkened eyes, she feels a pleasurable shiver of __**something**__ run through her. It is the same something that she sees in Yugi's blushes when she laughs with him, the same one that has drawn those idiots Honda and Jounouchi to another new green-finned arrival, Otogi._

_Once, Anzu was the focus of that (lust, or love? She is not certain) among the other members of the Tank. Once, she grasped their attention with every graceful twist of her fins. But now she seems to have lost her ability to capture it, and she is grasping at currents that do not exist and flirting like one shameless slut who died sometime back to retrieve her former followers._

_And through this all, Yami knows what he is doing to Anzu's authority, but he does not stop. He smiles his half-smirking smile across the waters at her while surrounded by his admirers, his every move promising all that they could ever want._

_Anzu refuses to give in to him. She has met Yami's intent eyes before, seen the almost eerie way everyone gravitates toward him, felt a strangely familiar tingle of warning whenever he passes near her. There is something off about Yami, something regal about his bearing and the careful way he chooses his words, and Anzu knows that he is something else. He is not only fish; he is not only attractive._

_Because though she is inexplicably drawn to him and the lithe black streak he makes in the water, she cannot suppress the part of her mind that screams of danger._

* * *

_**A Much-Needed Introduction**_

**Nobody knew what caused the Plague, not even those cursed few who lived to tell the tale. There were theories, of course, ranging from the typical (bad food and polluted water) to the downright ridiculous (a rather complicated idea involving truckloads of Total****TM**** Cereal, a pet elephant, and rubber-stopped sewer pipes) to the clichéd ('Ah, we have angered the Great Force that created All The Universe! Let us repent!'). All that anyone was certain of was that whenever a group's members began to turn up in the morning glassy-eyed and dead, their bodies coated in white discharge, there was nothing to do but make peace with enemies and resign to fate's will.**

**Anzu is famed throughout the Tank today, because, willingly or not, she was the one who finally solved the mystery of what caused entire groups of fish to suddenly up and die. She was the one who ensured the safety of the future generations, because as you can see**—**there is no Plague today.**

* * *

"Where's Yami?" Yugi asked Anzu suddenly as they ate dinner at the surface in silence, trying not to see the tears that ran down Ryou's blank face or the new sadness that graced Otogi's eyes.

Anzu was caught off-guard, unable to hide the flash of fear and foreboding that ran through her whenever she so much as heard Yami's name. Why did Yugi have to mention him _then_, when he should have been thinking about the ones who were going to die and not the red-finned, black-bodied fish? When Anzu thought she could leave it all behind and start anew with the next group that would arrive (that is, if she even survived this Plague—which she didn't think she would), forget all about Yami and what he had brought with him?

"_Who do you choose, Anzu?"_

"_Choose. Me or him?"_

"_So, Anzu. Have you chosen yet?"_

"Anzu?" Yugi asked worriedly. "Are you alright?" There was concern, genuine concern, shining in his eyes, and Anzu felt guilt twist through her heart like the merciless blade of a knife.

"Fine," she answered, trying to give a reassuring smile but ending up with something like a pained grimace on her face. "I'm just… nervous, I suppose, since the Plague is here again."

She hoped that she had effectively distracted Yugi from his original topic, when: "But do you know if Yami died overnight and was taken into the White Funnel? I mean… I never had a chance to tell him goodbye…"

Had Yugi forgotten, then, forgotten that hazy afternoon where everything changed? Forgotten the terrible fire in Yami's expression and the easy flick of the tail that had propelled him through the waters of the Tank, his parting words cold with fury:

"_No protesting, __**love**__. You have brought this on yourself."_

But then, Yami had said that it was Anzu's burden to bear, not Yugi's, and after all (she thought with resignation and none of the jealousy she had expected) Yami had always loved the small golden fish more, had always placed Yugi's adoration above his own desire for the female Yugi loved. (_Much good that did Yugi_, she thought with unusual cynicism.) And eventually, they had found a compromise.

"I don't know where Yami is," Anzu lied, her voice strained, and she was grateful that Yugi, despite the doubt in his eyes, let it be.

* * *

_The mating season approaches, and Anzu notes with some satisfaction that_ _**finally**__, everyone is staring at her once more with that almost predatory (or, in Yugi's case, innocent) look that assures her of her place in the Tank. Yami's crowd dissipates, drawn to her, the One And Only Female Present. They all know well, with the slick liquid intuition that only goldfish in their pretty tiny glory possess, that whoever gets to Anzu first will (most likely) conceive six hundred or so kids with her (give or take a few hundred), and then they will be forever elevated to the Very Top of the social pyramid._

_And so they, all the ever-loyal members of her sort-of harem, run around attempting to impress her in their various ways—well, all except Mokuba, a tiny black-bodied child, whose older brother is firmly holding him back from such 'vulgar practices' (Kaiba __**is**__ always one for fancy vocabulary)._

_Otogi shamelessly flaunts his green-streaked fins as he parades himself in front of her every morning, Honda and Jounouchi unsuccessfully trailing in his wake. Kaiba goes about in a less obvious fashion, showering her with little presents and favors—although Anzu sometimes sees the furious, ashamed glow in his blue eyes and knows he is only doing this for his brother's benefit._

_Bakura, his wiry silver-white body propelled by a single pale tail fin, simply stops in front of her every few days and smirks, "You want this?" as Ryou follows, blushing and apologizing on his twin's behalf while shyly asking Anzu to take him as her mate. Marikku and Malik (the latter recently emerged from his Yami-Lusting Daze) startle her when she wakes up with their faces in hers, as Malik rants about the flaws of the other candidates and Marikku drops (not-so-subtle) hints about a possible three-way. ("Well, when you're screwing my brother, I can't exactly screw him too, so I propose a compromise…")_

_And Pegasus only smiles seductively in the sidelines, knowing full well that when the losers of this round slink back in defeat with hormones still dominant in their blood, it is to him they will run._

_But Anzu cannot care less about them—she ignores their attempts and competition and concentrates on the only two who have not yet tried to woo her: Yugi and Yami. Yugi, of course, is too shy, too uncertain of himself despite his obvious infatuation with her, to join the male crowd. Yami, although Anzu cannot be sure (after all, who__** can**_ _be certain of what they are seeing in Yami's dark, mysterious eyes?) seems too proud to do anything. Anzu grits her teeth in private and flirts and laughs in public, struggling to hide her irritation when, instead of fawning over her, the two grow even closer together._

_To be honest, she wants none of her other suitors—not brazen Otogi or doe-eyed Ryou or icy Kaiba or even the package deal that is smirking Marikku and exotic Malik. She wants nobody except innocent little Yugi and usurper Yami, and what is worst: she cannot decide which one she desires, even though she_ _**should **__love one and hate another._

_So goes the confusion tumbling in her mind, so she starts and actually_ _**blushes **__(no, no, she must keep her composure, she must) when Yami murmurs in her ear with that alluring voice, "Follow me." He disappears, Yugi trailing behind him, into the shadow-filled log that occupies the center of the Tank. Anzu, her interest piqued despite her desire to appear aloof and the piece of her mind that screams for her to run, winds up in a corner of the Log where anyone passing by the open ends cannot see the meeting, Yugi and Yami on either side of her._

_In the darkness, she cannot be sure of what Yugi's expression is—nervous, perhaps? Excited? She cannot tell—but she__** knows**_ _Yami is smirking, that victorious smirk that sends shivers through her body. It is an almost pleasurable feeling as she floats in the knowledge that there is something so attractively __**dangerous **__about him, something that draws her in while her instincts (muted, so muted) tense her for battle and tell her to leave, leave as soon as she can. "So, Anzu," Yami almost purrs, sleek tail flicking, "have you chosen yet?"_

"_Chosen?" Anzu blinks rather blankly, her mind wiped clean as the very water surrounding her for one heart-stopping moment._

"_To be your mate," Yugi supplies softly, and Anzu can almost swear that he's blushing—but then again, she can't see him very well with this lighting._

"_Oh, um… no," she admits, forcing herself to stem the flow of words that want to follow:_ _**'Because I couldn't choose between you.'**_

"_Because you couldn't choose between us?" Yami teases, a low laugh escaping him._

_Anzu's eyes widen._ _**How did he—?**_

"_Yami thinks he's irresistible," Yugi sighs, his voice half-apologetic._

"_My claim is well-founded," Yami murmurs, and to Anzu's shock, he bends in and kisses Yugi point-blank on the mouth, so slow and thorough that Anzu cannot help but flush darker. Their interaction is tinged with the thick but invisible barrier of privacy that Anzu has seen in couples, and she feels that she is somehow violating sacred ground by watching. "What are you—"_

"_Shh," Yugi entreats her, his voice just a bit breathless as Yami kisses him again._

"_Choose," the red-finned, black-bodied fish growls at Anzu. "Me or him?"_

"_I__-I don't—" There is a strange thought-suffocating warmth traveling through her body, encouraging her to let go of her position, her logic, her __**fear**__,__and just_ _give in. It spreads like the fiery burn of pain and feels like the stomach-flipping scorch of pleasure, and Anzu is drunk on it—she wants_ _more and more and__** more**__, even though it is death and sin to even think so. She gives in to the wash of heat and doesn't listen to the echoes of the screams of so many years ago, to the faint, faint tinge of wrongness in the currents, because Yami's mouth is scraping harsh yet gentle against her side and Yugi has kissed her, faint but lingering, and it is all overwhelming her—_

"_**Choose**,"__ Yami demands, but Anzu, lost among the haze, doesn't hear._

* * *

_**What Comes After The Exposition**_

**Anzu did not know it then, but the one who represented the Plague**—**some say today that He **_**was**_** the Plague**—**was among the groups that had newly come to her Tank. He, along with Anzu's childhood friend, Yugi, vied for her favor during the mating season. And although the records are somewhat unclear about this, one thing is evident: Anzu was asked by the One Who Was The Plague to choose between them, and at first, she could not.**

**So the One Who Was The Plague remained and waited, but He was impatient. He asked Anzu again, soon after the time when she had not given Him an answer, and He forced her to decide. And Anzu chose Yugi, for reasons that are still unknown. The One Who Was The Plague became angry with her, and His vengeance was terrible to behold.**

**Why would He do that, you ask? He was not used to being scorned; He was accustomed to unconditional love throughout the many centuries He had lived. In winning and breaking the hearts of so many, He had forgotten what it was to lose, and to lose with grace.  
**

**The lesson? Be careful, children, because the ever-changing whims of the immortals are nothing but death to us.**

* * *

Anzu had never expected to see Kaiba's cool façade break, and she had certainly not expected him to be humbled in front of her, tears carving paths down the pained stone of his face. "Anzu," he said, and she marveled at how level his low voice was, "you have lived through three Plagues. I beg of you, use whatever knowledge you have to help Mokuba. I will do anything; I will kill myself afterward if you so wish, but please—help him. Help me."

"_Not one of your people will survive this, Anzu—not even you."_

"_No—Yami, you can't—"_

"_No protesting, __**love**__. You have brought this on yourself."_

"Kaiba… I can do nothing. I can offer no help. Nobody has ever survived an attack of the Plague, so count yourself lucky that you are not yet among the damned." Anzu felt another wrench of guilt as Kaiba's expression crumpled, and she was reminded of the vow she had made after the first Plague she had been through: she would never grow close enough to anyone to mourn them. She had only broken it with Yugi, and—well, Yugi had shown a remarkable resistance to the sickness.

"_I ask you for the last time: __**Choose**__. Yugi… or me?"_

"_Not one of your people will survive this, Anzu—not even you."_

To her surprise, Kaiba did not lash out at her with his usual acerbic sarcasm. But as he turned and swam away, Anzu caught his parting whisper: "I would say I am _un_lucky, Survivor."

And there was nothing she could do when Mokuba died and Pegasus grew more unnaturally silent with each passing day before he slipped into the Final Sleep, when Otogi (mourning Honda) left the world with only Jounouchi to hear his last words, when the already-insane gleam in Marikku's eyes grew wild after Malik's death.

Where once she was the head of a laughing group, she now swam among the remainder of them, noting with a familiar ache in her heart the despondent expressions that always came with the Plague. And she thought, with morbid humor, that frozen Kaiba and haunted Jounouchi and broken Ryou and mad, mourning Marikku would see their friends again soon—after all, weren't all of them doomed (doomed by Anzu, though it was Yami who had placed the curse) to die?

And slowly but surely, the only ones left were her… and Yugi.

* * *

_Yami confronts her the day afterward with Yugi—bright, laughing Yugi, with nothing to show for the previous afternoon than the slow flush of color in his face when he catches Anzu's eye—trailing behind him. His red-finned, sleek-black body twists through the water to her, and Anzu struggles not to blush herself when she remembers the feel of his mouth against hers. There is that eerily familiar thrill of danger suffusing her body again, clouding her thoughts, but she shoves it down as she glances at Yami's ever-present smirk and ignores the hint of intuition that wants her to hide._

"_Have you chosen, Anzu?" Yugi asks cheerfully once they are in earshot, his gold scales gleaming in the glow of morning. He is innocent still, despite what they did together yesterday, and Anzu cannot resist smiling at his incorruptibility before the seriousness in Yami's eyes and the sheer weight of the question bring her back to reality._

"_Not yet," she says, soft._

"_Then do it now," Yami inserts smoothly._

_She looks between them—at Yugi's hopeful expression and Yami's sharp observation—and finds that still, she cannot decide which one of them she would rather have as a mate. Yugi of the innocent laughter and ever-forgiving, endlessly loving heart, or Yami of the unreadable face and irresistible, alluring aura? "Can't it wait, guys?" she asks, voice light, hoping to dispel the topic before she is pressed any further. "The mating season doesn't end for another few weeks."_

"_I asked you yesterday," Yami says, his voice hardening considerably. "You didn't answer."_

"_That's because I didn't know who to choose yesterday," Anzu points out as rationally as possible, her stomach giving an odd wrench (with anticipation, or with something else?) as Yami's face darkens slightly. "I still don't."_

"_It should be easy," Yami says, impatient. "Who is the better in bed, hmm, Anzu?"_

_Yugi blushes even darker than before, and Anzu's mouth drops open. "That was just… just…"_

"_Uncalled for?" Yami offers, smiling, and something like relief removes the weight of anxiety on her heart. "Then let me make it simpler: Who is the better in character, the one who fits you and will make you happy—perhaps for more than just this season, but for the ones to come?"_

"_I-I really can't choose," Anzu stammers under his intent gaze._

"_I ask you for the last time," Yami says, and there is something alien and regal and haughty in his eyes, something that pressures Anzu to obey. "__**Choose**__. Yugi… or me?"_

_Anzu hesitates for one long, long moment: Yugi, her childhood friend, familiar and comforting—or Yami, the attractive new stranger, magnetic in his own way? She looks from wide, hopeful eyes to perilously gorgeous ones with promises of love deep within their dark depths, and what finally cracks her resistance is the knowledge that Yugi—dear, sweet Yugi—will be heartbroken if she does not choose him._

_The breath leaves her in one whispered word, and she has the inexplicable feeling that she has sealed her fate. __**"Yugi."**_

**"**_**What?"** Yami's eyes narrow threateningly even as the shock registers on his face, and Anzu instinctively backtracks, regretting it when a strange, low laugh escapes from Yami's lips and his expression turns furious—beautifully, terribly furious, like some kind of avenging angel looking upon the ruins of a world he has razed to the ground._

_Yugi, poor Yugi, damned by her unwilling favoritism, remains where he is, frozen—and Anzu notices, looking around, that she and Yami are the only ones who are still moving, that Yami, somehow, has stopped time._

"_You chose him?" Yami murmurs, the mad glow in his face increasing in intensity. "Over me? You chose a mere mortal, a foolish, __**stupid**__ mortal, over what I could give you? Do you know what I bring to the world, Anzu,__**my love**__?" The words are snarled, and she flinches back further._

_Then she recognizes the thick, palpable aura of the danger that emanates from him in waves and waves now: she has felt it three times before, present in the eddies of the water… right before a Plague began. "Yami," she whispers, horrified yet entranced, because she knows, with sudden certainty, the truth: "You're the Plague?"_

_He smiles, and she marvels (irrationally) at how unfairly gorgeous he looks, shining with the sheer force of his anger. "And it took long enough for you to realize it. And do you know what the price of scorning me is,__**dearest**__?" He doesn't give her time to answer. "I curse you now, you and your cherished friends of the Tank; I curse you with what is mine to give or take. Not one of your people will survive this, Anzu—not even you."_

"_No—Yami, you can't—"_

"_No protesting, __**love**__. You have brought this on yourself." He fades into the water as her surroundings come alive once again, and she knows that soon, none of them will wake to see the new day. She has placed too much faith in his sympathy, in the ever-changing, quick to leave, mercurial love of a god; she has forgotten the eagerly extended hand of vengeance and the blind prowl of hurt. He does not love her enough to spare her life; he does not love Yugi enough to spare his life._

_Anzu stares after Yami in desperate grief—because __**oh**__, she has chosen __**wrong**__._

* * *

_**A Last Thought to Ponder**_

**How do I know this, you ask?**

**Ah, but listen carefully, children. Can you not hear her? Anzu laments the deaths of her friends and of her Yugi, the echoes of her sorrow forever trapped within the walls of this Tank. And they will never fade, you see, as long as someone is still here to be told her story and be warned against the terrible mistake she made in loving an immortal.**

**Can you hear her mourning, children?**

* * *

**End**

* * *

The 'Black Funnel' is the suction thing in any fish tank; the 'White Funnel' is the net I use to scoop out dead fish. Finally, the mechanics of fish sex are not represented accurately here.

_**Reviews **_are greatly loved. :] _**Concrit **_is appreciated, as always.


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